TRIPLE TREAT FOR RIVERS FAMILY
The Rivers family — dad Grant, daughter Nicole, and son Adrian, along with mum Fiona — are no strangers to the drag racing world, with Grant and the kids sharing driving duties of the Blu’s Bros dragster for many years. While Nicole stepped away for a while to focus on studying, she’s made a welcome return to the hot seat this season. Of course, that means juggling which driver competes at which event.
The family seem to have come across the perfect solution, running in Competition class at NZDRA rounds. With the class being index based, the pressure is always on to be close to or under their own index to succeed, and succeed they have! Nicole drove at round three at Taupo, qualifying number one with a 7.24 at 170mph. She made it all the way through to the final, where she was against Grant Briffault and ran a 7.42 at 179mph to win the meet against Briffault’s 7.93 at 170mph.
For round six at Motueka, Grant was behind the wheel and qualified the car in the number one spot with a 4.41 at 157mph on the 1/₈-mile strip. He made it through to the final where he came up against Ana Paterson. Grant’s 4.49 at 158mph was enough to take the win and set a new 1/₈-mile national record for AA/D.
The pressure was on for Adrian to repeat the family’s winning performance at round seven at Masterton Motorplex. He didn’t disappoint; both he and the car were on form, qualifying in number two spot with a 7.00 at 189mph. Working through the rounds, he came up against Mike Coward in the final and ran a 6.90 against Mike’s 9.37 to make it a three-way win for the family.
While the results speak volumes about the dedication of the Whanganui-based team, they also speak volumes about the engine combo, which was built by Grant himself at Rivers Speed and Spares.
The combo, which runs on methanol, displaces 500ci and is topped with a 14–71 supercharger running 15 per cent overdrive and backed by a twospeed Powerglide-based transmission. The Rivers team would like to extend a huge thanks to their sponsors Total Transport Ltd, Penrite Oil, PN Engine Rebuilders, and Repco for making it all possible.